"When you imagine Palestine, what does it look like in your mind? Does it look like the photographs we see in the news all the time? Do you see abandoned buildings and piles of rubble? Rocky, barren land? Exhausted individuals standing in long lines for humanitarian aid? The injured, the sick? The dead? Or could you imagine a different Palestine, one with lush gardens and flowering trees? Could there be colorful handmade crafts? Plates of delicious food? Clear rushing water? What about community; what about neighborhoods and towns where people gather cheerfully for meals, celebrations, or just because?"
"There's a vision of Palestine, a real historical one, that Palestinian game designer Rasheed Abueideh wants to share with the world, even though (perhaps especially because) few people alive have laid eyes on it. That's because it existed nearly 80 years ago, prior to the 1948 Nakba that saw an estimated 750,000 Palestinians banished from their homes in the region by Zionist paramilitary groups, never to return. In the years since, it's grown more and more difficult to picture what a normal life might have looked like there, both due to the simple passage of time but also to the endless onslaught of news photographs and videos depicting the impacts of ongoing war and devastation."
"But Abueideh hopes that by showing what used to be, in video game form, we can come to better understand what's happening there now: the origins of the ongoing conflict, the life that Palestinians lead there today, why Palestinians long to return to a homeland many of them have never seen, and why individuals like himself refuse to leave in spite of everything."
""I tried to build my own company," he says. "The economy is bad here; we don't have an independent economy in Palestine. Everything is tied to the occupation. If you choose to live inside Palestine, it's not that easy to build a startup or to run a successful tech company that reaches millions, because we have a very""
Palestine is often imagined through images of rubble, injury, death, and humanitarian lines. A different vision exists: lush gardens, flowering trees, handmade crafts, shared meals, celebrations, and neighborhoods where people gather. That historical Palestine existed nearly 80 years ago before the 1948 Nakba, when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were banished from their homes by Zionist paramilitary groups and many never returned. A Palestinian game designer aims to share this lost reality through video game form. The goal is to connect the past to the present by showing origins of the conflict, everyday life, reasons for longing to return, and why Palestinians continue to stay despite hardship.
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